Northwestern Statues-menhir in context: connectivity and material connections during the Late Bronze Age

Abstract

This paper examines the northwestern staute-menhirs which are distributed in the area between the valleys of the river Duero and the river Miño, but that recent findings have extended to other regions outside that core area. Taking three key issues on the interpretation of them (chronology, landscape and image) as a starting point, this analysis focuses on the material relations between these material forms and a specific socio-material landscape of action (the sociomaterial forms of interaction characteristic to Atlantic Late Bronze Age). To this end, it takes into account different material connections (such as presence, encounter, coexistence, hybridization, etc.) that enable to contextualize the statues-menhir as part of a specific historical process: the integration of the northwestern Iberia in the interaction contexts between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic since the end of the 2nd millennium BC.